Commercial manufacturers of frozen pizza, for example, utilize a continuous process of dough base preparation and pizza crust formation. Pizza crusts are automatically topped with tomato sauce, cheese, ground meat, pepperoni, and other toppings considered desirable. Large quantities of these toppings are required to meet the demands of a manufacturer such as Jeno's, Inc., the assignee of this invention.
The present invention is concerned with those toppings which are originally obtained by the manufacturer in sausage form. Pepperoni sausage, Canadian bacon and salami, for example, are purchased by the manufacturer in two foot lengths with a diameter of between two and four inches. In order to facilitate preparation of the sausage slices from the sausage itself, it must first be broken down into sections or "chunks" several inches in length, which can then be handled by the dicing or slicing equipment.
Cutting sausages of pepperoni, Canadian bacon, salami, etc., into chunks has heretofore been done by hand or by conventional, band saw slicing machines. In the latter, the sausage is moved into engagement with a band saw blade. These known methods are labor intensive, time-consuming, and unsafe.